Whose opinion are you living for?
On independence and expat questions.
Wassup, Traipser! Dakota here with Traipsing About, my AI-free newsletter exploring living an intentional life while reclaiming creativity as an adult. I spice things up with travel experiences, pictures and daily drawings. See a typo? That’s very-human me doing my best!
Thank you for being here. I appreciate your time and attention in this tornado-at-your-front-door world.
In case you missed it: Last time I wrote about how our clock is running and what I’d do with only 10 years left.
The clock is running
The foolishness of all this living in the future! Like working very hard at something dull all your life so you can retire on plenty of money at eighty.
This newsletter round, I’ve got a couple of concepts I’ve been rolling around in my brain, all mixed with pictures from Utah adventures. Here goes!
Pure independence
I’m a big fan of Morgan Housel, author of The Psychology of Money and other excellent finance books. From this excellent blog post: a simple formula for a pretty nice life is independence plus purpose.
These ideas stood out to me:
Independence does not mean you don’t care what anyone thinks of you. It means that you strategically decide whose attention you seek. Rather than trying to appease everyone (foolish, impossible) you select the life you want to live and focus your attention on a smaller group of people whose love and support you deeply desire.
If I can predict your views on one topic by hearing your views about another, unrelated topic, you are not thinking independently. Example: If your views on immigration allow someone to accurately predict your views on abortion and gun control, there’s a good chance you’re not thinking independently.
When you’re independent you feel less desire to impress strangers, which can be an enormous financial and psychological cost:
Physical signaling (clothes, cars, homes, jewelry)
Clout-chasing (desperate for social media engagement)
Tribal signaling (political battles, status superiority, election bumper stickers)
Moral signaling (everything is us-versus-them)
“There is only one success,” says poet Christopher Morley, “to be able to spend your life in your own way.”
Are you one of the few Americans who could really move to Europe?
Such a great post by an expat living in Lisbon. He poses 10 questions to ask yourself to help guide whether you could move to Europe (and probably most countries).
With an Italian passport in my pocket, I love pondering this kind of stuff. Here are my favorites from his questions, with some quick comments afterward:
Are you a Security or Discovery person? Do you like the same vacations and routines, or do you love spontaneity and exploration? Everyone falls somewhere on a spectrum here.
Are you prepared to live far away from friends and family. Moving abroad means losing the emotional support and comfort that comes from previous connections.
Are you prepared to accept a lower level of comfort and convenience? Same-day Amazon, ha! Costco, the store everyone dunks on but secretly loves? You’ll miss it. A/C everywhere, yeah right! The U.S. is the land of convenience (for better or worse) and Europe doesn’t operate that way.
One from me: are you prepared to lose access to he massive amounts of uncrowded, fabulous public lands that we are lucky to enjoy in the U.S.? (Gooseberry Mesa, Utah.) Are you ready to make a massive investment in learning the language? It took me a couple of years of daily effort to speak Italian fairly well. After a year of study, Portuguese is still tying my brain in knots with the pronunciations! It takes work…that’s oh-so-satisfying, but real.
Have you done the research, figured out a residency path, and nailed down your finances to make it possible? Looots of logistics to consider, as my friend Don writes about in his and his wife’s experiences moving to Porto.
So much to consider! Could you do it??
Traipsing About is motoring onward. But first, a quote for the road…
It is easy in the world to live after the world’s opinion; it is easy in solitude to live after your own; but the great man is he who in the midst of the crowd keeps with perfect sweetness the independence of solitude.
Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Self-Reliance” (via the excellent book Vagabonding by Rolf Potts)
Onward,
Dakota
